I’m no fan of sitcoms.  They’re tired, repetitive, formulaic disasters that just really aren’t all that funny.   They’re choke full of stereotypes; nearly every character playing the role of at least one.  Worse still, they’re the embodiment of everything that is wrong with gender issues in America.

The father is almost always a submissive, aloof, screwup.  The wife a dominate, almost always career oriented, strong willed, liberated woman.  The kids, well, they’re whatever stereotype is convenient for the episode’s moral message.

From a feminist standpoint the powerful woman matriarch might seem like a good thing at first glance; however, digging deeper, the family structure of a sitcom family is terrible for women, terrible for men, and just plain terrible all around.   What on the surface might seem like empowerment is just adding additional duties to the ‘stereotypical’ female roles.

First off, the male, despite being portrayed as an incompetent, is usually the main provider for the family.   He’s the one who goes to work in a high salary job and comes home to the wife.  His career is the important one in the relationship.  The wife is often only starting out a career and even if she is employed she is in a much less prestigious and well-paid job as the husband.  We often won’t see the husband at work, but the wife’s job will almost certainly be featured.

Since the husband is the main provider the wife is often still tasked with the household chores of cleaning, cooking, and looking after the kids.  After all, the screw up husband can’t be trusted to do any of them since he will ultimately fail.  That’s assuming he has time between work and the golf game that will ultimately spawn a huge argument.   The task of running the household, managing the checkbook, paying the bills, and the whole gamut of decision making ultimately fall to that of the dominate woman.

The message received is that the aloof, incompetent male needs a strong liberated woman to take care of him.  He isn’t capable of making decisions, helping around the house, or even standing up for himself.   This existence as a near child is hardly fulfilling for men and is certainly a horrifying prospect for women.  Not only do they have to fulfill the 1950′s good housewives guide, but they’ve now been tasked with everything but changing the oil and mowing the lawn.

However, let’s take a look at another of the other issues that this relationship of dominate woman and emasculated male pose.  Take the argument.  Sitcoms have taken the idea that women are always right to the extreme.   Insulting to males: this extreme makes males too stupid to ever come up with a rational argument that would be right.  Insulting to females: they’re incapable of ever recognizing a superior point of view to their own.  What we’re really being told is that both genders are irrational and stupid in their own way, which is probably the most egalitarian part of the ideology sitcoms promote.

Yet, because husband and wife clearly love each other there is little fault given to this relationship?  Would this kind of relationship really succeed in real life?  As great as being doted on hand and foot would be, is being treated like a child in your own house by your own wife what a man really wants?  And do women really want to spend their whole life as an adult babysitter?

Sure, every once in awhile agreeing that the woman is always right might be fine for a relationship, but it’s also important to stand up for yourself and be assertive.  Doting on one another should be on the basis of doing something nice, not because you have to or because it’s your gender specified role.   Mutual respect and sharing go a lot further in empowering men and women than forcing the woman to do everything because the man is incompetent.

By far the worst offender at promoting incompetent males and nanny matriarch is “Everybody Loves Raymond.”   Ray is quite possibly the most emasculated, pussy-whipped, simpering wimp that never had an ounce of self-respect.  Luckily there was a supporting cast that carried the show, which oddly enough, Ray’s brother Robert probably ended up with the best and most egalitarian marriage in the show.  Perhaps kids are the ones that turn marriages into horrid gender inequality fests.  Either way, Robert’s marriage was never portrayed all that positively.

8 Simple Rules unexpectedly benefited from the tragic death of the actor who played the father.  Thus, they were forced to rework the entire framework without an emasculated and subservient husband. They also had to rework a bunch of the formulaic plot structures as well.

Probably one of the better sitcoms was Tool Time.  Sure, Tim may have been a blundering idiot, but he was an intelligent blundering idiot.  Many of the situations he found himself in would never happened if he didn’t have a decent bit of mechanical knowledge.   Quite a lot of his little more power projects ended up successful as well.  We often saw Tim on the job.  More importantly, he shared the duties of running the house with his wife, including decision making–though he sometimes just went and made some all by himself.  Sure, Jill fell into the role of a woman starting off a career after spending years raising children, but Tim had to pull more weight around the house.   Even at the end of the show, Tim set aside his ambitions for his wife’s career, which isn’t something you often see in sitcoms.  Sure, it might not have been perfect egalitarianism and it still featured a bumbling idiot male, but at least it tried, which is more than I can say for Ray Romano.